5.0.5 Arms PvE Guide (Basic)

The Arms warrior relies heavily on its rage management and its cooldown usage.

Talents:

Level 15: Juggernaut is the go-to talent. Charge CD is lowered allowing quicker movement on heavy movement fights.
Double-time can be used in certain situations.

Level 30: All 3 are viable here. It comes down to personal choice. Enraged Regeneration is "strong CD" while Second Wind is a spec and forget talent.
*Impending Victory can be a dps increase if you find yourself having downtime.

Level 45: Very situational (and rarely used). Staggering Roar I do not recommend due to the fact that many classes already bring roots. Piercing Howl is a great snare to assist with kiting. Disrupting Shout is great for an extra interrupt.

Level 60: Dragon Roar wins out here if there are not multple mobs (4+). Bladestorm is the other choice and should be used when you know there are mobs that will last for 20 seconds or so. Shockwave is for control and will rarely be used.

Level 75: Safeguard and Vigilance are both reliable choices. Safeguard is greating for breaking snares. Vigilance adds an extra CD for tanks. Use both carefully as they can get you killed if poorly timed.

Level 90: Bloodbath. This ability lines up very well with other cooldowns and I will explain in much more detail below. Avatar is also a nice CD for a "you need to die now" kind of mob.

Glyphs:

Death From Above (Must have)

Unending Rage (Must have)

Recklessness* (This one you can change for certain fights)

Collossus Smash. Replace Recklessness with this if you do not have armor reduction on the boss.

Rude Interruption. Replace Recklessness if there are multiple interrupts on a fight.

The Arms warrior relies heavily on its rage management and its cooldown usage.
Level 60: Dragon Roar wins out here if there are not multple mobs (4+). Bladestorm is the other choice and should be used when you know there are mobs that will last for 20 seconds or so. Shockwave is for control and will rarely be used.

The Arms warrior relies heavily on its rage management and its cooldown usage.

Level 45: Very situational (and rarely used). Staggering Roar I do not recommend due to the fact that many classes already bring roots. Piercing Howl is a great snare to assist with kiting. Disrupting Shout is great for an extra interrupt.

Level 60: Dragon Roar wins out here if there are not multple mobs (4+). Bladestorm is the other choice and should be used when you know there are mobs that will last for 20 seconds or so. Shockwave is for control and will rarely be used.

Level 90: Bloodbath. This ability lines up very well with other cooldowns and I will explain in much more detail below. Avatar is also a nice CD for a "you need to die now" kind of mob.

Don't underestimate any of these talents. They're all very good in their own respect and as with most talents for warriors, very fight specific. Staggering Roar is great for fights like Heroic Feng on the shield phase adds. I keep Disrupting Shout as my standard talent unless the fight requires something else since it allows you to basically get 3 interrupts in a row. The level 90 tier talents are all good. Avatar is great for execute phases and for fights with a burn phase mechanic like elegon. BB is an all around multipurpose talent but is kind of lack luster when you need to target switch often because you want to have 100% uptime for the entire 12 sec duration. Stormbolt is better for target switching as long as the additional targets are not stunable since its damage is multiplied when they're immune to stun.

Originally Posted by scadouche

Rotation aka "Rage Management":

Mortal Strike should be kept on CD unless you will cap on rage.

Collossus Smash should be used when you have enough rage pulled to weave Mortal Stike, Overpower, and atleast 1 Slam.

Slam is your on GCD rage dump. This should be lined up with Collussus Smash unless you are close to rage cap with Collossus Smash still on CD

Heroic Strike is your off GCD rage dump. This takes priority over Slam only when you have 2+ stacks of Taste for Blood.

Overpower is use as your free filler when pooling for rage.

Execute takes priority over everything sub 20%.

MS should ALWAYS be kept on cooldown. If you're going to cap on rage, you should plan ahead and weave in a Slam or use a HS to keep yourself under cap.
Colossus Smash should also be used on CD without clipping a preexisting CS debuff. Your priority rotation should be: MS>CS>OP>HS(2+ TfB)>Slam>HS
In execute phase, Execute takes priority over everything except for CS. You also want to make sure you can keep up your enrage as much as possible so saving berserker rage would be a good idea.

All 3 level 90 talents are great. Avatar prolly takes the lead with 4p14. I prefer storm bolt myself (pre 4p) and have a hard time seeing bloodbath beat it.

I assume you do your best to fit the storm bolt into a colossus smash? I didn't really consider storm bolt as fury but I can see it hitting quite hard as Arms since you have a better CS uptime. Still a bit hesitant due to the need of stun immunity for damage, but then again most of the mobs in at least raids are stun immune.

I'll have to play around with the level 90 talents a bit more, I sort of picked Avatar and never looked back when I wasfury, but for some odd reason I feel like the reck + skull banner + avatar combo is a bit weaker for arms (might be my imagination though).

A question about Dragon roar, though: I assume that MS is always the most important move to use, but where does DR fall in when:

-No colossus smash available, no cs on target. I assume it's just under MS here?
-Colossus smash is available for use, but no cs on target. I'd assume that you would pop DR -> CS?
-Colossus smash is on the target. Where in our priority does Dragon Roar end up?

And if I do take Storm Bolt, where is it in the priority list? And is it more important than DR (assuming stun immune target ofc)?

I have been following this and my arms DPS is FAR beyond any warrior I have seen in any dungeon and raid and I have mostly PvP gear.

Originally Posted by frontfleezy

All 3 level 90 talents are great. Avatar prolly takes the lead with 4p14. I prefer storm bolt myself (pre 4p) and have a hard time seeing bloodbath beat it.

I have also been using Storm Bolt. I have tried all three and I really like Avatar except the massive CD attached to it, moved to SB for the gap filler between our rotation and I must admit the damage that move kicks out is pretty damn sweet. I usually can time it when my burst is going (trinks, Reck, Skull Banner, CS) and I have seen it crit over 300K. I recently switched to Bloodbath to see what all the fuss was about and I changed back immediately. The damage was utterly atrocious for a level 90 talent (in my opinion anyway).

I highly recommend Storm Bolt as a level 90 talent or Avatar before Blood Bath.

Crit is only .31 points of str for arms, at least according to my gear/sim.

Bloodbath pre tier is better DPS- again according to my sim.

I also still don't see how gemming expertise/crit is better than str/crit, and here is my math. Please show me if I'm wrong, I'd love to be able to min max more, but my numbers don't show it.

A few assumptions: According to simcraft, 1 crit is worth .31 str, haste is .18 str, and mastery is .21 str. So I need over 3 points of crit to equal 1 point of str.

A yellow socket - so an orange gem. Gemming str-crit is 80+(160x.031) or 129.6. As long as the socket bonus is at least +40 str, it is worth gemming str-crit over pure strength.

Gemming expertise-crit is so I can get more crit by not reforging out of crit to get expertise capped. So basically assume its equal to a 320 crit gem + 60 str socket bonus (such as on the crafted gloves). Thus the math would be 320x.031=99.2, compared to if I gemmed str-crit which is 129.6.

So I really don't see how gemming two secondary stats is better over gemming str-crit/expertise.

I'm also not sure how for gems a point of crit is worth double what it is on a piece of gear- its the same stat. So if a piece of gear has 550 crit on it that's equal to 170.5 str, and adding a pure crit gem is less valuable than adding a str-crit gem per the math above.

I think the main problem is people are trying to calculate the value of hit/expertise in relation to crit/str etc. Yes expertise/hit have a very high value compared to strength up to their (soft)caps. However, replacing 80 strength to gain 160 expertise is inferior to reforging 160 points out of crit to hit said caps. And will continue to be so until crit is worth over half a point of strength. And that is only assuming you can get at least a 1:1 expertise->crit conversion (Or less if you are over expertise/hit cap by a few points).

Now for fury, the opposite is true. Since crit is worth so much more than strength, it is well worth gemming expertise-crit to gain more crit at the cost of strength. But not so for arms.
That is my math, based upon the stat weight. If I messed something up, or am missing something obvious, please point it out- I'd love to know.

Last edited by Darkfriend; 2012-10-13 at 04:07 AM.
Reason: Added more math.

I was going to sim my character to be sure of the gemming, but as it turns out simulationcraft becomes simulationcrash on my computer. I would've loved simming it before replacing all my gems as I was fury a few days ago. It's a bit confusing when you have people on either sides of the crit vs str arguments.

I was going to sim my character to be sure of the gemming, but as it turns out simulationcraft becomes simulationcrash on my computer. I would've loved simming it before replacing all my gems as I was fury a few days ago. It's a bit confusing when you have people on either sides of the crit vs str arguments.

Tbh I think it's very much based on your gear. I simmed my char before and after upgrades and unless I majorly screwed up the sim or something, after obtaining a couple of pieces from MV, crit just sneaked in as slightly more than half the value of strength, making it better to gem for.

Also I'd like to add that I'm currently finding Bloodbath the best talent, it lines up perfectly with Dragon Roar and other cooldowns. I've seen 30k+ per second ticks of it. This is only my personal opinion though.

Tbh I think it's very much based on your gear. I simmed my char before and after upgrades and unless I majorly screwed up the sim or something, after obtaining a couple of pieces from MV, crit just sneaked in as slightly more than half the value of strength, making it better to gem for.

Also I'd like to add that I'm currently finding Bloodbath the best talent, it lines up perfectly with Dragon Roar and other cooldowns. I've seen 30k+ per second ticks of it.

I'll just keep my current gemming then, for now. Still bugs me to no end that Simulationcraft decided not to work for me.

I'll toy around a bit with the talents, I think the general best choice (assuming you never change your talent choice based on a specific fight) is BB since it's fairly versatile, but I guess it's fun seeing 350k+ storm bolt crits...

Since the AoE section is missing, I do have a few questions regarding AoE:

1: Sweeping strikes is 50% of your physical damage on a second target, right? I think it was 100% at some point but I recall seeing some nerf bringing it down to 50%. Also it seems to have crap range, AoE dummies in org are too far apart for it to strike two of them.

2: Does sweeping strikes work on all single target attacks, no more, no less? Does it work with Storm Bolt/Heroic throw? Cleave? etc

3: this is more or less what the icy veins guide says about 4+ target aoe:

I feel like the Arms whirlwind is really weak (though I recently swapped from TG fury). Any comments on the mass target AoE priority? On few(er) targets we have sweeping strikes doing a good job, but I feel a bit uncertain regarding mass AoE.

I hit the Raider's Training Dummy (Boss lvl) for about 10 Minutes with 1) Bloodbath talented and 2) Storm Bolt talented
You should take the results with a bit of scepticism since I noticed the following:
- Lag (Full realm, prime time -> lagging in orgrimmar)
- I did not play 100% perfect, I noticed that myself while testing (but it should not affect numbers TOO hard)
- Every Storm Bolt hit the target while CS was up
- I sometimes delayed Storm Bolt to get it into a CS
- The 2nd Recklessness did not line up with Storm Bolt
- On the 2nd test I used HS way too often over Slam resulting in DPS loss. This should not affect the data concerning Storm Bolt much (but rather working in favor of Storm Bolt since Blood Bath scales with damage dealt while the buff is up).

I can't post the results (as in screenshots) since I'm new here so I'll just post the numbers (sigh...):

conclusion: SB hits harder than BB over the course of a single-target fight.
In shorter fights BB might be better since you have more GCD's to use (and BB uptime would be more relevant).
In aoe-situations the decision is a no-brainer.
I can't tell you guys much about the scaling of both abilities, but maybe someone with a more profound knowledge in such things could do so.

I hope I was a bit of a help here.

Another edit:

SimulationCraft shows me a discrepancy of 0.2% in two test runs in a raid environment where Bloodbath dealt 5.9% in the first sim and Storm Bolt did 6.1% in the 2nd sim.
The testing was patchwerk-style fight with gear imported from my armory.

I'll just keep my current gemming then, for now. Still bugs me to no end that Simulationcraft decided not to work for me.

I'll toy around a bit with the talents, I think the general best choice (assuming you never change your talent choice based on a specific fight) is BB since it's fairly versatile, but I guess it's fun seeing 350k+ storm bolt crits...

Since the AoE section is missing, I do have a few questions regarding AoE:

1: Sweeping strikes is 50% of your physical damage on a second target, right? I think it was 100% at some point but I recall seeing some nerf bringing it down to 50%. Also it seems to have crap range, AoE dummies in org are too far apart for it to strike two of them.

2: Does sweeping strikes work on all single target attacks, no more, no less? Does it work with Storm Bolt/Heroic throw? Cleave? etc

3: this is more or less what the icy veins guide says about 4+ target aoe:

I feel like the Arms whirlwind is really weak (though I recently swapped from TG fury). Any comments on the mass target AoE priority? On few(er) targets we have sweeping strikes doing a good job, but I feel a bit uncertain regarding mass AoE.

I'm curious as to this, as with the glyph of OP, cleave>slam (according to my testing-this was back pre-90 so take w/ a grain of salt) when two targets are up.

Lastly, I believe sweeping strikes was reduced to 55%, not 50%, but I could be wrong.

Personally, last I simmed, BB was better than SB, but that PROBABLY will vary, depending on a few factors:

1.) How movement heavy the fight is. Stormbolt is ranged, so on a fight like elegon it might be better, but you give up avatar burst for execute phase.

2.) Rage incoming. If you are vodoo dolled in Gar, you want to swap to serker stance. More rage will end up meaning more slams, which could require cutting a slam to get out SB, resulting in a DPS loss compared to if you had BB which takes no GCD. (SB takes 2 GCDs per minute, which at this point in time isn't a problem, as long as you don't clip something else.)

In terms of gearing and enchants, yes. Gemming priority is still Crit>Strength

I'd recommend running your character through simcraft beforehand, as it varies on your gear. Right now Strength is something like ~2.40 for me, while crit is ~0.95, making strength the clear choice for gemming.

1.) How movement heavy the fight is. Stormbolt is ranged, so on a fight like elegon it might be better, but you give up avatar burst for execute phase.

Since you don't want SB to hit a target without CS being up I'd think that SB is virtually restricted to melee. However, in rare occasions, you can CS -> have to move -> use SB. But that's probably not going to occur very often since most encounter mechanics are predictable and you can squeeze the full CS before you have to move most of the time. (just a guess)

Since you don't want SB to hit a target without CS being up I'd think that SB is virtually restricted to melee. However, in rare occasions, you can CS -> have to move -> use SB. But that's probably not going to occur very often since most encounter mechanics are predictable and you can squeeze the full CS before you have to move most of the time. (just a guess)

More towards fights where you are hitting unstunable adds w/ SB, such as sparks on elegon (especially if a DOT class is having trouble killing their add) or the adds on Garjal. Not for moving and using on boss really.